3 Tips for Balancing Family and Your Home Business

Everyone has priorities with family, hobbies, kids’ activities, church, work and many other things. Fitting in your home business in a busy life isn’t easy. With four young kids, I definitely know how tough it can be.

Even among the busy family life, you can always find time for your home business if it’s important enough. Here are a few tips that have been an enormous help to me and other entrepreneurs I have coached.

Write Down Your Priorities

People talk about priorities, but they rarely take the time to actually prioritize. Making a priority list is critical and will certainly help you figure out what things are most important what you can get rid of. You may even want to start by just writing down the things that are most important to you in your life, and then a separate list of the things that are less important or that aren’t adding much value to your life.

Don’t just go through this list in your head. Get it down on paper or on your computer. Begin by writing down the things you have to do right now in your life. If you still have a full-time job, that would obviously go near the top. If you have an important commitment with your church, for example, write that near the top of your list.

Of course, at some point, you will add your home business on your priority list. If you are serious about your business, you will have to treat it like a business. If you want this to be a significant source of income (or maybe it already is), it’s going to have to move up the priority list. This will help you enormously with identifying the distractions in your life and all the things you are giving time to that really don’t matter.

Set the Expectation with Your Family

Since you are your own boss in your home business, you will have to set your own schedule. This is where you can sit down with your family and decide together what that schedule will be.

My family typically revisits this at the beginning of every month. We have a dry-erase calendar on the fridge (shown here) that we write events on for the month. The kids also participate in this and write in their own sports events, school activities, family events, etc.

This goes back to the priority list. We decide what events for the month are can’t-miss. For example, my daughter’s spring play last month was a can’t-miss event. Now, there are also some can’t miss events in my business, and those go on the calendar too. If there ever is a conflict between a family event and one of my home business events, we talk about it as a family, then decide on it. The important thing is that it’s talked about and agreed upon.

You can also set this expectation with your family on the day-to-day commitment for your business. How many hours a day or week will you devote to your business? Again, if this is a business, treat it like a business. Make sure your on the same page with your family.

Set Goals with Your Family

This is something that has helped my family a lot, and I wish I would have done this a whole lot sooner.

Involving your family in the goals for your home business makes them feel part of what you are doing. This way, they know that what you are doing is for a specific reason that benefits everyone. This helps a lot when you have to be gone some nights or even if you have to go out of town.

Set up a goal for a summer vacation. Get a new big-screen TV. Make sure the family knows how much it will cost so they know the goal. Write on a dry erase board when you get closer and closer to your goal. The pic here is part of our family vision board showing some of our goals. (Oh, and the Cancun goal was a summer trip for my wife that was paid for by hitting one promotional bonus in my home business.)

Post your goals where everyone can see them. Post pictures of the vacation you will take or the exact TV you want to buy.

This not only involves your family in your home business, but it also teaches your kids about goal-setting and achievement.

If this post helped you, please leave a comment below and share with anyone you think might get some value from it. Also, please comment with any advice you can give on how you balance family and your home business.

P.S. Did this post help you? If you got value from it or know someone who would, please share it and leave a comment below with your suggestions. And don't forget to enroll in my free training How to Stand Out Online and Land Your Dream Customers for tips you can start doing right now to attract your dream customers online.

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